Developing Intuition (by Tom)

[CFTraveler]

Tom wrote a post explaining how to sharpen or develop your intuitive senses.
I have quoted it here, and if you have anything to add, please do.
Please keep it to additions or questions.
Thanks.

"The more you listen to your intuition the clearer it comes in, and the more you rely on your intuition the more you can learn to trust what you are being told and the clearer the messages will become.
Actually, you had to learn how to ignore your intuition and to avoid getting the messages - it is a "normal" part of the growing up process. I can't even begin to count all the times at school when someone would answer the teacher's question correctly only to be told that it didn't count unless they could give a logical step-by-step process for how they got the answer. If you just know the answer, though, what can you say?
The best students are the ones who can approach problems both ways. First they listen to their intuition and then they work backward to be able to devise a step-by-step answer for the teacher. The sharper your intuition is the more likely it is you were in situations where it got you in some kind of trouble and you had to learn to suppress it more than everyone else did. (When I was growing up I would suddenly know things about the people around me that they weren't really comfortable with. They often felt like I was looking right through them and they tried to avoid me.)

Meditation, self-hypnosis, and energy work can help, but they aren't really the main way to reverse the problem. Listening to your intuition has to be a high priority for you and it sounds like this is already the case. Now you have to be watching carefully for when your intuition is speaking to you because there will be a tendency for this to be in whispers especially at first. If you are getting messages and you don't understand them, ask for clarification. If you aren't sure you are hearing the message, ask to have it repeated more loudly.
The most important thing is that when you get the message and you fully understand what it is saying, try to go with it whenever possible. Even if things seems to turn out bad initially, there is still a reason behind the scenes for going that route. Your intuition does not run counter to your reason. If you are getting a message and it seems to run counter to all logical sense, go ahead and ask for a confirmation or an explanation. If you find that you absolutely cannot go with something you are guided to do, just say so and ask for a different direction to go in. For example, if you seem to be getting a message involving harming yourself or others that is probably not really your intuition speaking.
As long as you are being respectful toward your intuition you will continue to receive messages, and the voice of your intuition will grow clearer and easier to distinguish from other voices in your mind. This is an ongoing relationship you are working on building. All relationships involve building a shared vocabulary over time based on shared experience. It is like when people have worked together for a long time or grown up together and someone new comes along. At first the person may get tired of being told that something was an inside joke or they had to be there to understand. Your intuition may seem to have its own inside jokes and stories and it may refer to them in ways that seem cryptic at first. Maybe you will find yourself thinking of a specific type of food and it is a sign that an opportunity is coming along and you should pay close attention for when it arrives. The way to make signs come more quickly is to focus on a question. Decide what it is you need to know most, and you will be either given the answer or guided to the information some other way. Some times it will be clear right away and others it will just take longer for the answer to build to the point where you can't miss it."

http://forums.riverofenlightenment.com/ ... cseen.html

ps. I broke it into paragraphs for easier reading.

[John]

I would like to add that love for the intuitive process is, as I see it, a most importent factor.

The energies from these feelings are most encouraging.

John

[Palehorse Redivivus]

Great post.

I would add that I've found it important to have a solid "baseline" for your intuition to work from. It's always working, but if you hold programming telling you that, for instance, "suffering is good" -- your intuition will guide you into situations that produce suffering.

Whatever your entire system is oriented toward, is what your intuition will lead you to. More likely, if your system is full of all sorts of mutually contradictory programming, intuition will seem harder to spot... not because it isn't there, but because it's leading you erratically in all directions, and you have to calibrate which of those directions you actually prefer in order to hone your intuition.

[eyeoneblack]

Hi. I wrote an essay a couple of years ago that deals with intuition and am currently working on another where I'm looking at what neuroscience might have to offer, but for now I hope you might like to peruse this little offering:

The world is too much with us;
late and soon, getting and spending,
we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours…
- William Wordsworth

Nine Fragile Links to an Answer
1.
Thelma really wasn’t much help. I had come to her with a question and I thought she might have some personal insight to offer, having, I think, faced much the same dilemma at some time in her life.

“Thelma, knowing that the choice of our parents in this life is no accident, that in fact we select our parents prior to taking on the bodies that ultimately result in our birth, how is it that MY parents are as alien to me as garden toads?”

We discussed the ‘spirit family’; that multiplicity of the common Monad to which large populations of spirit-become-human belong. She offered that sometimes members of the community/family elect to incarnate in a rather demonic personality for the benefit of another member in the human life. And then she wondered what that would do for the Karma of the ‘bad parents’ that so elected?

No, that didn’t work for me at all. Certainly my parents are not members of my spirit family anymore than toads are.

2.
I searched my hard-drive with every possible unique word in a document I really wanted to review. My notes on Gopi Krishna’s Kundalini; the Evolutionary Energy in Man were gone! I had borrowed the book from J. Don Cook and emailed the notes to him just in case he was interested. I called him and he searched his email account but there, too, they could not be found.

Rats. I would have to read it again if I wanted the information it offered. I hadn’t particularly enjoyed the book in the first place, but interspersed through an otherwise tedious narrative Krishna discussed many useful concepts regarding the Kundalini.

3.
This time through, however, it occurred to me that a psychologist who wrote an analysis of the experiences of Guru Krishna at the end of some of the chapters was an author I needed to know. His name is James Hillman.

4.
I googled his books and found that there are a number of them – which one?

5. & 6.
The Ice Storm of ’07 hit and my Ex and I gathered at our daughter and son-in-law’s home which still had electricity. This being a ‘Cabin Fever’ ready situation, daughter Liz suggested she and I make a thrift store run. Ok, whatever, let’s just get out of the house.

7.
One thrift store, two thrift stores, THREE thrift stores and I was getting plenty bored. But she was on a mission of some sort and I could only bide my time perusing the thrift-store books. Pulp fiction, popular novels, mysteries, blah-blah-blah. I looked around for her; she was still on the hunt.

One more pass through the books. Clancy, Grisham, Koontz, Hillman – uh, WHAT!? I reached down and pulled out an unmarked, never read copy of James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code – In Search of Character and Calling.

8.
It just so happened that day I had but one dollar and some change in my pocket; but the book was just one dollar and I bought it. I took it back to Liz’s home, read a few pages and made a mental note that it looked promising.

9.
At the time I was working my way through a large and intriguing book on metaphysics, perhaps the bible of metaphysics, Isis Unveiled, and was loathe to put it down. But then again, the Ice Storm put just about everything down for a while – especially my income. So there wasn’t any reading going on at all for a couple of weeks as I put up eBay listings and shipped stuff.

Finally one day the sun came out (in every sense of the expression) and with matters of immediate concern behind me, I positioned a lawn chair on the patio, somewhat out the cool breeze but in full view of the slanting winter sun and went to fetch a book.

I am not a multi-tasker. When I start a project I intend to see it through to the end before I’ll start another. It’s just a quirk of mine, so when I reached for The Soul’s Code it was with a pang of guilt and a nod to a breach in the ‘natural order’ of things.

Complete (or is it?)
I began to read, adjusting my chair from time to time as the sun headed West.

One after another Dr. Hillman took on the questions and observations that started this chain in the first place. He elucidates his “acorn theory” which refers to that perfect seed with a perfect destiny we often refer to as the ‘higher self’.

Then a chapter titled “The Parental Fallacy”. He busts wide open the myth of the mother-child bond as a predictor of the developing adult. He espouses a philosophy that incorporates both my mystic and rational Being and in so doing serves to sever that causal connection between myself and my parents – between all selves and all parents - as it never existed in the first place.


Later I paused to marvel at the mysterious course this book had taken to find its way to me. It seems that fickle CHANCE had operated intelligently!

If I had not formulated a question and sought an answer (1), the chain would have never begun. How important this is! We must ASK. But why? Doesn’t this ‘higher self’ know what I need? Certainly it knows all and everything about me. I (this physical ‘self’, this ‘personality’) am the blind one here.

A theory: Left unexposed within the story is a factor of Asking that might hit close to the point. Far from being an academic matter this question embodied my continued happiness which depended on more than an answer (Thelma had an answer) but on the resolution of a maddening conflict that satisfied both my sense of reason and my personal sense of Soul, of Self.

Perhaps in formulating the question and seeking an answer I added a necessary component – emotion. With this the problem took form and planted itself, where else, but in my emotional body – my Astral self. And what better interface between the evanescent ‘higher self’ and the dull physical self than that fluid, intuitive and instinctive Astral body?

** Firmly establish the question/problem. If you REALLY WANT it, it will take form in the Astral – your link to your Guardian Angel…

It is often remarked, sometimes in all seriousness, about the possible sensitivity a computer or other electronics might have to the psychic field or aura of its user. I cannot remember losing any file at all from my hard-drive in the three years I’ve had this particular computer, but the notes I took only last Summer, the notes I so much wanted to review, did a real disappearing act, (2) and twice.

If I had been only just slightly less motivated, this link would have broken. I did not really like Krishna’s book the first read and did not relish reading it again. Besides, I could have found the little bit of information I wanted fairly quickly but I reread every word. And I really can’t say why, other than (3) I took an interest this time in the commentator, James Hillman.

** Perceived obstacles or frustrations may be opportunities in disguise. Avoid the quick fix, don’t ask ‘why’, you don’t have the answer, just do it…

So I googled his books and found a number of them. I had no idea which one I really needed and besides, I didn’t want to fork up the price being charged for them. So, (4), I passed on them.

** Expect your ‘cosmic counselor’ to be SPECIFIC, it is not too much to ask...

Liz had an idea to go to thrift stores (5).

** This intelligent agency is laboring 24/7 to get through to us and often uses people around us for its purpose…

I had an idea to ‘go with it’ (6).

** Make ‘yes’ your default answer in most every situation and to most any proposal. ‘No’ will get you ‘no’where. ‘Yes’, on the other hand, belongs to the world of Spirit…

Well, one more pass through the books (7). I thought I was just killing idle time when in fact I was hot on the trail.

** Be patient, stay alert, even and especially when you don’t know what you’re looking for because, without exception, even by definition, you don’t…

I had almost no resources ($1) to buy a book, but I had enough (.

** Gifts from your higher self will not be lost because you can’t afford them. They’re GIFTS after all. The Cosmic Mind is well aware of your circumstances…

I broke with routine and selected The Soul’s Code for an afternoon read (9).

** Habits and routines often get in our way. Leadings from ‘on high’ most always depend on spontaneity. Be willing to ‘mix it up’ now and then…

Having retraced the steps from Thelma to Hillman; from a question to an answer, perhaps you have noticed just how fragile were the links in this chain of events. I readily admit it was nothing but dumb luck that I didn’t break it along the way! Well, maybe we need to put our faith in ‘dumb luck’?

Wordsworth opines that we are so planted in the business of the world, we are blind to Nature. Our worldly reasoning mind is no ally when it comes to communicating with Nature, be that our higher selves/intelligence or the lessons of elemental spirits – rocks and trees etc.

Find tongues in trees,
Books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones
and Good in everything.
Shakespeare (As You Like It)

The Bard weighs in, as well. Communicating with our higher self, Spirit, daimon – whatever you call it – is a ‘listening’ inside of your worldly self. I believe there is probably no limit to the quotations I could array in support of this simple concept. It is, after all, the essence of Art. And nothing is more of an art than listening to your higher self, or what Hillman often refers to as your ‘genius’.

Your Guardian Angel will not be frustrated by circumstance. Far from that, this hidden Intelligence creates and definitely takes advantage of circumstance. It helps to pay a particular type of attention.

It is no surprise to most people that our dreams often present useful information in the form of symbols and the action that takes place within them. Why would your waking life be any different? The forces at work in our dream life don’t go to ‘sleep’ simply because we wake up. Being awake simply complicates the matter. Once again, our higher selves are working 24/7 to get through to us, and just as in dreams, they employ the same intuitive and instinctive techniques.

Yesterday I went to the coffee house with a draft of this essay and The Soul’s Code which I haven’t yet finished, these thoughts pre-empting my time. I made some minor edits and reread the opening quotation from Wordsworth. Reflecting on the meaning of his words awhile I then decided I had done about all could for the essay, folded it and put the pencil down.

I went to the bookmark and took up The Soul’s Code, again. I read a page and turned it and was struck by a remarkable ‘coincidence’. There, at the bottom of the page, was a quotation from Wordsworth – not mine, but it was Wordsworth all the same.

This would not be so surprising if in fact it had occurred in a dream. Then again, I’ve already made the point that our waking lives are full of dream stuff if we only notice. Quickly I picked up the pencil again and scrawled this; “Links are everywhere! I must be swimming in a tide of links.” I paused and considered the word ‘tide’ as I wrote it, wondering why I just didn’t write ‘sea’ of links

I picked up reading again at Hillman’s quote from Wordsworth and noticed the word ‘linked’ within it. And immediately following the Wordsworth quotation a quotation from William James, “Authentic TIDINGS of invisible things”.

What can I say!? Links really are everywhere. Look for them.

[eyeoneblack]

I'm sorry that little essay was so long. I should have posted a synopsis for you. My bad.

[CFTraveler]

I actually enjoyed it very much. Thanks.

[eyeoneblack]

This may be pretty amazing - a case of listening to your intuition. I live in Oklahoma City, USA, the central state of what is referred to as tornado alley (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas). This is the season for severe thunderstorms and today we got a reminder of just how destructive they can be.

I arrived at work (WalMart) with my lunch and 20 minutes to eat it before my shift. I noticed on the break-room TV a weather map of the state showing severe storms in the NW. I couldn't hear the meteorologist but storms in Oklahoma almost always move from the SW to the NE so I wasn't too concerned. Then a vague sense of urgency started to bother me a little and I scarfed down my taco, and with less than 10 minutes left I decided I needed to move my truck.

"Really, is that necessary, it could make me late to the floor and the storms are to the North, not a threat and I really don't want to bother with it." (Mine is a giant super-center and the move would take time walking a good distance.) But I've learned over the years not to ignore gut feelings like I was experiencing, so I pulled the truck around to the East side of the building as close and to the center of it as I could get (just in case).

Two and one-half hours later I was working inventory records in the back and I hear this loud, I mean REALLY loud bang, then bang bang, and ba-bang, ba-ba-bang bang bang, and it finally occurred to me what was going on. Storms I had totally forgotten about were on top of us, hurling tennis-ball size hail at the building, playing the tin roof like a tom-tom.

I kept on working, we were racing against a deadline, but I was plenty distracted, "My poor Nissan; my poor UNINSURED truck is taking a beating." The pounding lasted a good ten minutes (a long time for a hail core) and sheets of rain for another fifteen and then it was over. I set my jaw and went out to see the damage.
The windshields of the cars to the left and right of mine were all spider-webbed with cracks from the impacts. Across the drive, away from the building those cars fared even worse - the back windows on a few having collapsed into the interiors. Later I
made my way to the West side of the building where employees generally park, where I had parked before lunch. The parking lot was littered with glass. Probably two of every three cars had their windows laying in thousands of pieces in their seats and around the car. Collapsed or not, no car or truck's windows weren't broken. The destruction was complete and awesome.

I began to doubt my initial assessment of my truck, thinking surely not, and went back again to confirm the unbelievable. My windows were completely unharmed in spite of the fact I had a little star crack in the windshield from a rock to begin with.

Well, that's the good news, but it's really good news compared to everybody else who will be without a ride until their windows are fixed. The bad news is, the hood and roof of the truck look like they have been beaten with a baseball bat. But hey, these hail stones were so big they knocked sport (side) mirrors off the cars.
I'll be driving a souvenir of today for some years to come. Well, my vanity (or lack of it) can handle that. Like I remind myself often, it could be worse.

[Ouroboros]

Nice! You rolled a 20 on intuition.

If circumstances were not what they were, I'd move to the middle of tornado alley just for the storms. I'm strange like that.